


A Different Way to Be

by nojamhands



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/F, F/M, GG turns 20, Gilmore girls turns 20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26852797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nojamhands/pseuds/nojamhands
Summary: Rory and Paris reflect on the course of their friendship as they tell Rory’s toddler about high school.
Relationships: Paris Geller & Rory Gilmore
Kudos: 6





	1. Never Quite As It Seems

**Author's Note:**

> Hello wonderful people!
> 
> Happy Gilmore Girls anniversary!! 20 years...wow I feel old. 
> 
> This is just a little something I’ll be posting throughout October to celebrate :)

They are sipping coffee when she first brings it up.

“Do you remember when you first started at a Chilton?”

Rory nearly chokes on the scone she’s just taken a bite of and gives Paris an incredulous look.

“I’m sorry, I think I’m hallucinating,” she said as she safely swallowed her baked good. “Did youjust ask me if I remembered when I first started at Chilton?”

Paris shrugged nonchalantly, as if it was a perfectly reasonable question. “It’s a perfectly reasonable question.”

Oh.

Rory continued to cast a quizzical glance at her friend, but she smiled nonetheless. “There are plenty of minutiae of my high school experience that I eventually deleted from my brain due to disuse, but my first months — hell my first year — is not something I’ll easily forget.”

Paris had the sense to look a little embarrassed at that. “I had hoped you had perhaps forgotten some of my, uh...tense moments.”

Rory chucked at that. “‘Tense moments?’ I think that’s an understatement. But you were going through a lot. More than we both realized.”

Paris nodded, the blush fading from her cheeks as she cracked a smile. “What did you call me? One of those first times I had to approach you of my own free will.”

It was Rory’s turn to flush pink. She cleared her throat. “A pop-up book from hell.”

The two women looked at one another for a moment, absorbing this reminiscence. The laughter came quickly and lasted for some time.

Paris laughed more like this now. It had been nearly two years since her divorce from Doyle was finalized. They became more amicable as the spilt became more serious and as they made their own personal discoveries. Doyle finally realized was a self-possessed, Hollywood douche-nozzle he had become (his words, not Paris’s), and Paris had finally had enough of it all to go to therapy. It took her some time to find the right fit — meaning the kind of therapist who knew how to balance compassion with directness so that Paris found both validation and someone to challenge her — but once she met Mel the connection was almost instant.

“Her name is actually Melbourne,” she had informed Rory during a late night video chat. “So she really understands the egregious experience of being named after a major city. The everyday layperson simply does not and cannot understand what it’s like.”

“Sure, of course,” Rory said reassuringly, though she herself absolutely did not understand the intricacies of possessing such a lamentable moniker.

Mel made Paris furious at times but made her equally....the only word for it was soft, which is the last word anyone would have ever associated with Paris. It still was a side of her she did not reveal to others, with the exception of Rory and her own children.

And Rory’s own child as well.

“Do you think he’ll have his own Paris when he goes to children?” Paris asked, giving Rory’s son a tickle on his foot.

It was hardly the first time she had made a gesture like this, but it still moved Rory all the same.

“I hope he does.”

“What do you think Grayson Richard Gilmore?”

In response, Grayson giggled and grinned. He was nearly two years old, andhis giggles and smiles were just as delightful as they always had been.

“Chilton?” he looked at the both curiously; he was just as inquisitive and precocious as his mother had been.

“That’s where Mom and Paris first met, Gray.”

“But I wasn’t always nice to your mommy, Gray. But she stuck around and the rest is history.”

Rory smoothed her son’s hair, smiling up at her longtime friend. “She’s right, Gray. If you had told 16-year-old Rory that we would be here right now, she would have laughed in your face.”

Paris smirked at her.

* * *

Paris was smirking at her, like a snake about to devour its prey. “You’re not going to kiss me now are you?”

Rory’s typicallytranquil temper exploded. “What is wrong with you?!”

Paris’s smirk vanished, replaced by a sneer. “Nothing. I’m great.”

Rory found herself launching into a rant that could have put Luke to shame. Paris at least had the decency to look appalled and apologetic. She offered a non-apology and acknowledged Rory’s olive branch, which, with Paris, was as good as a high five.

Rory was still seething for the rest of the day, but played the part ofattentive and amiable student well.

She kept replaying Paris’s mocking words in her head.

_You’re not going to kiss me now are you?_

_You’re not going to kiss me now are you?_

_You’re not going to kiss me now are you?_

Why would she say that? Why had she done that? Rory knew they had their differences, but this felt far beyond academic rivalry into deeply personal territory.

But the problem was solved wasn’t it? Paris backed off and she knew she would make up with her mom. So why were those words eating at her? Why was she fighting a flush in her cheeks and palpitations in her heart?

She brushed it off as adrenaline from her outburst. That was the only explanation. She would feel better when she cooled off.

That was the first night she dreamt of kissing Paris.


	2. Totally Amazing Mind

Rory is reading to Grayson one night when Paris FaceTime’s her. She was away at a medical conference in California where she was speaking about her fertility practice and its success rate.

“Honestly it’s just common sense,” Paris said, pouring herself a glass of wine. “I know I’m a genius, but if men could think beyond their own anatomy and get over their internalized hubris, one of them could’ve done this ages ago.”

“What about other doctors who are women?” Rory asked.

Paris made a dismissive gesture. “They could’ve done it, too. But men talking down to us like we are incapable of separating our own ovaries from someone else’s has turned a lot of women off.”

“But not you.”

Paris gave her a smug, satisfied grin. “But not me.”

“Mommy? Read?”

“Oh, sorry. Did I interrupt evening reading? I always forget about the time difference at the end of a long day. What are we reading this evening?”

Rory closed the book and moved the cover up to the screen.

“ _Who Was William Shakespeare_?”

Rory nodded. “It’s a big series of children’s books. _Who Was, Where Is, What Was_ , all about important historical people, events, and sites. I hadn’t seen them before, but you know my mom loves to go back into the kid’s section at Barnes and Noble again. Only now she can splurge on her grandson and not feel guilty, which I’m glad for. Gray pulled this one out today. We are working in sight words and letter sounds mostly, but he absorbs the information like a sponge, don’t you, Bud?”

Paris’s face was suddenly mildly devious. Rory quirked an eyebrow.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments, love is not love which alters when it alterations finds or bends with the remover to remove - oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark who worth’s unknown although his height be taken,” Paris recited dramatically.

Rory’s eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. Paris’s eyes sparkled mischievously.

“Mommy?”

Poor Grayson was utterly in the dark. Rory pulled him closer to her and placed a delicate kiss on his head.

“Paris used to tease Mommy about Shakespeare.”

“And your mom threw a tantrum when she was late for her Shakespeare test,” Paris added.

“It was not a tantrum,” Rory muttered, sticking her tongue out at her friend. Grayson followed suit, which sent Paris into a fit of laughter.

“I can only imagine you and Lorelai were this way,” she said, wiping away a few tears that has squeaked out in her laughing fit.

Rory smiled. She didn’t remember as much of her early childhood as she used to, but her memories of her time with Lorelai in the potting shed her sacred to her.

“Well, I may have thrown a ‘tantrum’ as you call it, but you totally flipped when we did the Romeo and Juliet reenactment. So I think maybe we are even on the Shakespeare Mania front.”

Paris scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You _know_ I was right. Those other interpretations were so cliché and asinine. The Elizabethan interpretation was best.”

“Truly a classic interpretation considering we genderswapped one of the roles.” Rory winked and smiled down at her son. “When we did one of this man’s plays,” she said, pointing to Shakespeare on the book’s cover, “Paris played one of the boys! It was great fun.”

Grayson’s eyes widened in fascination while Paris’s face smoothed into a shy smile.

* * *

Paris was not smiling despite her classmate’s reassurances, and Tristan’s bombshell upon his arrival seemed to fry her already crackling nerves.

“What are you standing there for?!” she demanded of Rory as she raced down the hall in Romeo garb. “Let’s go. You better start sucking on an Altoid!”

Rory’s heart stopped and she felt the color drain from her face.

Was Paris going to kiss her?

_You’re not going to kiss me now are you?_

Rory had not forgotten the previous year’s inner turmoil, nor had her subconscious apparently. She didn’t regularly dream of kissing Paris, but she still dreamt of it occasionally. And when she did dream...

Rory snapped back to reality and took a calming breath.

 _It’s fine,_ she told herself. _It’s just for class_. _Anyway, it’s not like she would really do it. Right? She wouldn’t._

_Would she?_

The iota of doubt that had taken root in her mind sent her into a mild anxiety spiral; it took all of her energy to stay focused and not absolutely lose her cool.

She managed to keep her anxiety at bay until the end of Romeo’s monologue.

Rory was barely breathing, partially for effect and partially because her heart was pounding out of her chest. She had to stay calm.

“Oh true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss....I die.”

Rory’s anxiety was soaring, but instead of kissing her, Paris collapsed onto Rory’s chest, which, oddly enough, caused Rory even more panic.

_Surely she can hear my heartbeat. Will she think it’s just nerves? Is it nerves? Why am I sweating?_

They wrapped up and were preparing to go their separate ways, Rory trying to avoid eye contact with Paris without making it seem like she was trying to avoid eye contact with Paris.

“Great job everyone! No thanks to the anti-Hardy boys, our grade is safe.” Paris congratulated them with a satisfactory smile and nod of her head.

She and Rory briefly made eye contact as they moved toward the exit. Both turned away quickly and hurried along to their respective audience members.

When her breathing had slowed, Rory relaxed her pace. Then a lightbulb went off in her head.

_Had Paris blushed? No._

_Wait._

_Had she?_

Thinking back on that fleeting moment on the drive home, Rory became more certain that Paris’s ears had burned red.

_But **why**?_

That was the first night she dreamt of snuggling Paris, her head resting comfortably on Rory’s chest as they watched C-SPAN in Rory’s living room.


End file.
